Harnessing Your Motivator

I love sports—not enough to spend time watching hours of it, but enough to read about it and watch a few championship games.

Some of the greatest athletes in the world have a motivation to be the best in the world at their job—a drive that’s unparalleled. 

But how does a person keep that motor revving at such a high level for extended periods of time? Loving your job isn’t simply enough of a motivator to complete your goals.  

In the movie Rocky, the title character Rocky has a coach named Mick—a curmudgeon of an old man who gets every ounce of effort out of Rocky so he can eventually become a boxing champion (spoiler alert: he doesn’t become a champion until the second film). Mick knows how to push and pull Rocky—the right exercises and drills, what to say and how to say it.

We all have a Mick living inside us, and it’s the greatest athletes who know how to talk to their inner Mick so that he talks back. I call this, “learning to harness your motivator.”

For basketball players Michael Jordan and Larry Bird, they would remember slighted words spoken by an opponent and the next time they saw that opponent, they would compete harder than ever before against that opponent and succeed to unprecedented levels.

For some players their motivation is to help their family out of a desperate financial situation, for others it could be to lift up their entire neighborhood. 

There’s so much to learn from the way these athletes approach their jobs to the way we approach our jobs, lives, and dreams.

It’s not always easy to stay motivated once we set ourselves on a certain path or paths: marriage, friendship, artistic pursuits, completing a long-held goal. But if we can harness our motivator, our inner-Mick; the determination… and achievement becomes manageable and tangible.

There are many reasons to set goals: altruism, fame, fortune, proving a person wrong, honor, and so on.

Harnessing your inner-Mick can be especially helpful if you dislike a certain situation you’re in—a crappy job, a bad friendship, a roadblock in your long-held goal. Asking “why am I doing this, and what’s my motivation,” can help (even in small increments) un-stick you when you’re stuck, provide the necessary mindset to go into a job you dislike while pursuing something you enjoy a little more, and even find the inspiration to stay or leave. 

One caveat to this whole “Inner-Mick” analogy: in the film, Mick was a little verbally abusive to Rocky… you don’t get to do that to yourself. While you’re harnessing your motivation, it’s better to treat yourself kindly and say nice words, which are much more helpful than saying to yourself, “You’re nuttin’ but a bum.” (You had to see the movie to get the reference.)